by Nancy Rue
Still, when I parked in the fenced-in parking lot and sat looking at the bleak building, I was afraid to go in. I was afraid that in spite of all my hopes she wouldn’t be there.
Stay close. That pulled me out of the car and across the parking lot where an empty-eyed African American girl sat on a picnic table smoking a cigarette. I smiled at her. She might be a friend of Tristan’s. She waved the smoky hand at me.
It was the first shelter I’d been to where I wasn’t met at the door by someone resembling a bouncer. Signs pointed me to a long room with a counter where an upbeat young woman in a neon pink sweater set asked if she could help me. I didn’t give her my usual spiel. I just said, “I think my daughter may be here. Tristan Soltani. She might also be going by Brandi Wines.”
She gave me a long look and asked me to please have a seat. She didn’t say, “We don’t give out that information,” so I banked that in my hope vault. I made another deposit when she disappeared into a cubicle and returned with an airy “Someone will be right with you.”
I wanted to leap over the counter and find “someone” myself. But I didn’t think that qualified as “staying close,” so I sat in one of the expected green faux leather chairs lined up on a curling floor mat and tried to imagine Tristan coming here for the first time.
Had they taken her through the door marked Intake Room with its round, wired-glass window? Had she been buoyed up from the depths by this woman’s hopeful voice? Had she clung to every spot of color that broke up the yellowed walls with announcements about “Choices” classes for parents and scholarships available at St. Joe’s?
I was surprised to see people I assumed were residents wander through the office, right where I could see them. One droopy-eyed kid about nineteen complained that he couldn’t sleep at night because other people snored. Miss Cheerful handed him a pair of earplugs. Another one slid a portable CD player onto the counter and asked if she’d hold it for him.
“Be happy to,” she told him, “but if somebody steals it, I’m not responsible.” She delivered that in the same chipper way she said everything else. The kid opted to take it with him.
From somewhere behind the office cubicles, I heard young female laughter. I was straining for a hint of Tristan in it when someone said, “Why don’t you come with me?”
I looked up at a gaunt African American woman who smelled like lavender and wore a weary expression so deep it looked like a permanent part of her face. I sprang up, knocking the chair against the wall.
“I’m sorry!” I said. “I’m just a little bit—”
“I understand you’re looking for your daughter,” she said. And then she smiled, and it changed everything. There was humor in her eyes and optimism in the lift of her eyebrows. “Why don’t we go upstairs? It’s quieter up there.”
Upstairs. Where the kids they sheltered lived and moved and had their being. I clutched the banister as I followed her and tried to suck in every voice, every shadow of a person on the walls of the hall above us. She ushered me deftly into the first room on the left and shut the door.
The room was narrow and lit only by a yellow-bulbed floor lamp in the corner. The chair she offered looked as if it had once belonged to a dining room set. Other mismatched chairs were gathered around a low coffee table with a candle on it.
“This is our meditation room,” she said. “It’s a nice place to chat.” She extended her hand as she sat across from me. “I’m Demetria Hall.”
“Serena Soltani,” I said. I watched for a flicker of recognition in her eyes. The only thing I saw was expectation.
But I couldn’t start over again. I knew Tristan was there, and the thought of pouring out my story for the hundredth time was suddenly ludicrous.
“My sixteen-year-old daughter,” I said, “Tristan Soltani. She was brought here; someone rescued her from the streets when she ran away from home.” I leaned forward. “I’d like to see her, please.”
Demetria folded her hands in her lap and appeared to be studying me carefully. I couldn’t read anything in her eyes, and I frankly didn’t care what she saw in mine.
“You say she’s sixteen?” she said finally.
“Yes.”
“We usually don’t allow anyone under eighteen to stay for more than a night before we send them to the Department of Human Services. They’re much better equipped to help minors there.”
My very soul began to sink. I couldn’t let it go there, down where one more disappointment might wipe me out completely.
“She was prepared to pretend she was eighteen,” I said. “And maybe you knew her as Brandi Wines. That’s what her ID said.”
Demetria smiled faintly. “Lying about her age might last a week, maybe a week and a half. She would have been assigned to a primary counselor, who can usually figure out from mental health assessments and just from listening to their stories how old kids are.”
“Usually,” I said.
“The shelter is at risk if we help minors without parental or DHS permission.”
“And they might give it to you?”
“That would be rare.” Demetria sat up straighten “Now, if you want the number for DHS—”
“Just tell me …” I put my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes for a moment. “Just tell me what you said to her when she came here.”
“What we would have said if she did come here?”
I nodded. She watched me again before she said, “We would have asked her no questions except whether she was hungry or wanted to take a shower or to make a safety call.”
“What’s a safety call?”
“To let someone know she was alive and unhurt and in a protected place. Then we’d ask her if there was anything she wanted to share with us. During that initial contact we’d try to ferret out whether she was suicidal or homicidal.”
I herded my thoughts away from that trail. “Then what?” I said.
“We’d give her a bed, and then as I said, over the next several days we’d get to know her better, let her know what we have to offer.”
“Which is what?”
“That’s probably a moot point, Mrs. Soltani.”
“I just need to hear it.”
She put her hands in the pockets of the long scarlet sweater she wore over her jeans. “Okay. Not knowing she was only sixteen, we’d tell her she could stay up to nine months as long as she worked our program. That would involve us getting to know each other, helping her establish some goals, providing her with tools for getting employment, giving her an outfit appropriate for a job interview.”
I sank against the back of the chair and realized I’d been holding my breath as she talked.
“Are you all right?” Demetria said.
“I’m so grateful that she came here. Even if it was only until you found out she wasn’t eighteen, at least you were kind to her. She’s so sensitive—”
My voice snagged. Demetria said nothing. At least she wasn’t denying that she’d ever seen Tristan.
“Most of the people who come here are between eighteen and twenty-one,” she said finally. “Too old for youth social services and too young for the adult programs. They’re desperate to make lives for themselves, but they don’t have the tools or the resources.” Her face grew grim. “Even the tough ones realize they need a safe place. Kids on the street, girls especially, are exploited every way you can think of. If they’re lucky, they find us before they get into prostitution or get addicted to heroin.”
“Even if she did, we want her home. We don’t want her to have her baby with strangers. I don’t know what we did wrong, but we love her—”
I couldn’t reel myself back in this time. I leaned my head against the chair and cried. I had been so sure this was the place, that I would leave here with my arms around Tristan.
“Let me just say this.” Demetria spoke as if her words were on tiptoes. “If she came here and we sent her on to DHS, we would have asked her who in her family she trusted. We would tell her that if that family member ever
inquired about her, we would take that person’s contact information and pass it on to her. That’s if Tristan told us where she could be reached.” She pressed her fingers to her lips before she said, “That’s the best I can do for you.”
“Then let’s do that,” I said.
She left to get a form. I closed my eyes and let the hope resurface. The way she had said Tristan’s name—she knew her. And she cared about her.
I got up and went to the door, listening for Tristan’s light, dancing walk in the hallway. As I leaned against the wall, I saw that I’d been sitting with my back to a high window. A framed piece of stained glass hung in front of it. “I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,’ ” the dusty green letters said, “ ‘my God, in whom I trust.’ ”
“You found your sanctuary, Tristan,” I whispered. “Stay close, and we’ll find you.”
My confidence wilted, however, after I filled in the form giving my cell phone as the primary number and said good-bye to Demetria. I was leaving without Tristan. My arms still ached. Fear for her still filled my veins like barbed wire. I was still waiting for her to reach out for me.
And I didn’t know if I could do it anymore.
I didn’t go straight to the car. I crossed the street to a flower shop and pretended to gaze at the display of silk poinsettias trying valiantly to be Christmas. Covenant House was reflected in the glass, and I searched each window for a glimpse of her face, a peek to make sure she could still smile, a breath of a chance to say something that would bring her back.
When I saw the front door open in the reflection, I dug my hands in my pockets and turned toward the parking lot, head down. They probably thought I was looking for a way to break in and steal her.
I was halfway across the street when someone, a woman, called out, “Mrs. Soltani!”
I turned and walked backward. “I’m not going to try anything,” I said to the tall figure approaching me. “Really.”
She broke into a jog. “No wait, please. I have a message for you from Tristan.”
Tires squealed behind me. I dove for the curb, and the woman reached it at the same time. She cupped my elbow in one hand and waved off the cursing driver with the other.
“Are you okay?” she said to me.
I grabbed her arm, clad in tweed, with both hands. “Tristan?” I said.
She put her free hand on my shoulder. “She asked me to talk to you. Shall we get a coffee?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was Kate George. The Reverend Kate George. With her mouse-brown choppy hair flattened by her knit cap, her skin blotchy and umpampered, and her bone structure reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She knew Tristan.
She sat across from me at a tiny table in a corner grocery store, pushed a steaming paper cup at me, and said, “Tristan wants me to tell you some things.”
“Is she okay? Is the baby?” I stopped myself and spread my hands on the tabletop. “I’m sorry. You talk.”
“Come on, you’re her mother. Of course you want to know her vitals.” Kate gave her coffee a brisk stir with a plastic spoon. “Physically, she’s fine. She hasn’t gained as much weight as they want her to at the clinic, but she still has a few more months to go. So far so good.”
“You said physically. What about emotionally? Is she afraid?”
“Terrified at times.” She took a sip and grimaced. “That’s awful.” She peeled open a container of cream. “Let me explain my relationship with Tristan. I’m a chaplain at Covenant. One of the first things Tristan told them in her intake was that she was a Christian. Well, she said she used to be a Christian until she ‘totally messed up her entire life.’ She was sure God didn’t want anything to do with her now.”
I clenched my hands together.
“Anyway, needless to say, I was called in. That was a God thing.” She looked briefly at the ceiling. “I spent a couple of hours with her, saw into her heart a little bit, and I went straight to the director and said, ‘We can not let this young woman get lost in the system. I don’t care how young she is, she needs to be here.’ We pulled a few strings with DHS, and she’s been with us for a month.”
She added another cream to her cup, eyes focused on the process.
“God bless you,” I said. My voice was barely audible.
“I’ve spent time with her every day.” Kate smiled wryly. “I don’t exactly have a line outside my office door. We usually go into the meditation room, light a candle. That seems to calm her.”
The back of my neck crawled. There was something very wrong with this. I had to ask another woman things my daughter couldn’t tell me herself. I had to find out from this stranger about her health and her emotional state and her spiritual crisis. This lady was telling me, the mother who raised Tristan, what it took to calm her down.
I balled up my hands and had a sudden Nick moment. He would be threatening the Reverend Kate George with a lawsuit right now, veins bulging everywhere. Another reason I was here talking to her, not him. I took a deep breath. “Did she tell you why she wouldn’t come home?”
“I have a feeling,” Kate said, “that Tristan was very good at concealing her feelings from everyone, including herself, until she came up against some that were bigger than she was. They were so foreign and scary, she tried to run away from them.”
“Not to mention the fact that she thought her father would kick her out of the house if he found out she was pregnant. I had to hear that from an ‘exotic dancer.’ ” I squeezed the cup. “It’s just not true.”
“I’ve gotten her to admit that to a certain extent. She’s still convinced that he won’t love her anymore if he finds out, which I’m sure by now he has.”
“He’s upset. He’s confused.”
“Of course.”
“But he loves her. How can she not know that?”
“Here’s where it gets complicated.” Kate rubbed her heavy hands together. The knuckles were chapped to a painful-looking red that she seemed heedless of. “Tristan’s feelings about her father are all tied up in her misconceptions about God the Father. In her mind, as long as you do everything perfectly, the Father—either one—loves you and is proud of you and showers you with all life’s goodies. But if you disappoint Him by being the slightest bit imperfect, you’re done. The Father might say He forgives you, but you have a big black mark next to your name, and you are no longer who you and everybody else thought you were. And that’s something your Tristan just can’t handle.” Kate put an empty cream container on the tip of her index finger and tapped it on the table. “She has a deep sense of shame over all this, and I don’t think it all came from her father.”
She left the rest unsaid. My name was written in the silence.
The nettling in my neck went down my back. If I’d had hackles, they would have been standing up. Since my meeting with Virginia Hatch, I’d been willing to accept my share of the blame for Tristan’s choices, even if Nick wouldn’t. There hadn’t even been any pride to swallow. I’d been wrong, and all that mattered was finding her. But this—
“I came here—” My teeth tightened down on my words. “I came here to take away Tristan’s shame. I want to tell her that we are all to blame.” I shoved my untouched cup aside, sloshing cold coffee over Kate’s pile of empty creamers. “I have to talk to her. How many mediators do I have to go through before I can speak to my own daughter?”
Kate looked at me as if I had just pulled a veil from my face.
“This is interesting,” she said.
“It isn’t ‘interesting.’ It’s frustrating. All I want to do is put my arms around my daughter and her baby. You can’t do that for me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to minimize it. It’s just that what I’m seeing here doesn’t match what Tristan has told me about you. I’d have bet the farm she was telling the truth.”
“She was.”
Kate lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m sure she
told you I let her father make the decisions, and I carried them out.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“That was the way it worked. Nick is wise and loving and strong, and I never saw any reason for it to be any other way. But this—this was a reason. I’m standing by her, no matter what. I have to be the one to tell her that.”
“Can you promise her that her father won’t make her give the baby up?”
My mouth fell open.
“That’s what’s terrifying her right now. She’s very protective of that baby.”
“And she thinks Nick is going to take it away from her?”
Kate rubbed her fingertips across her forehead. “I have come so close to getting her to call you. Serena, she misses you so much I don’t know how she copes with the pain.” She let out a long breath. “Every time I think she’s ready, she looks down at her belly and almost becomes hysterical.”
“She’s that convinced he’s going to make her give the baby away?”
Kate leveled her gaze at me. “She’s that convinced you’re going to let him.”
I shook my head, but inside, the words stayed intact. Stay close. Go after her. Tell her.
“You’ve given me what I need,” Kate said. “I can’t promise anything, but I think with this and the fact that you’re here, so close, I can get her to meet with you.”
I put my hand to the back of my neck, just in case I did have quills. They were ready to fire.
“Can I just say I hate having to do it this way?” I said.
“I don’t blame you. But as I keep telling Tristan, God’s at work in all this. Look how He’s strengthened you. Now you can pass that on to her.”
I sagged against the table. “I hope so.”
“I know so. It’s obviously who you are. That’s what parents really give their kids.”
I closed my eyes and said, “Please, God, bridge the gap between what I am and what she needs.”
“Amen,” Kate said.
She promised to call me the minute Tristan agreed to see me. Not if, but when.
She said she would talk to her as soon as she came in from school.